Samsung's Galaxy Ring is here, and honestly it's just a bit basic. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into what does and doesn't work with Samsung's latest wearable. Also, we discuss Friend's new AI gadget, which listens to your conversations and sends text messages to help you feel less lonely. To get a better sense of the device, Devindra also talks to Friend's CEO, Avi Schiffmann, about why he's leaning away from the productivity side of AI helpers and more towards the vibes of friendly AI. (And yes, we also ask why he spent $1.8 million of Friend's $2.5 million funding just to buy the Friend.com domain.)In other news, we discuss the potential impact of KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act) with India McKinney, the EFF's Director of Federal Affairs. While lawmakers are uniformly positioning KOSA as a way to protect kids on the internet, it could also lead to draconian censorship and destroy free speech on the web as we know it.Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!TopicsCherlynn reviews the Samsung Galaxy Ring: Great sleep tracking, but needs more features ' 2:13Interview with Avi Schiffmann, founder of AI wearable company Friend ' 27:27KOSA passes the senate ' we chat with EFF's India McKinney about why it matters ' 48:22What we've learned since the massive 7/19 Crowdstrike outage ' 1:12:07Elon Musk shared an AI altered video of Kamala Harris without labeling, breaking the rules of his own site ' 1:18:57Apple Intelligence arrives in the iOS 18.1 developer beta ' 1:21:57Google makes peace with third-party cookies after years of mixed signals ' 1:26:38Around Engadget: Mat Smith's Galaxy Flip 6 review ' 1:29:36Working on ' 1:31:44Pop culture picks ' 1:32:22Subscribe!iTunesSpotifyPocket CastsStitcherGoogle PodcastsLivestreamCreditsHosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn LowGuests: Friend CEO Avi Schiffman, EFF Director of Federal Affairs India McKinneyProducer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'BrienTranscriptDevindra: What's up, Internet' And welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor DevindraCherlynn: Hardwar. I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.Devindra: Today we are back from a bit of a break, a bit of a summer break. How are you doing, Cherlynn'Cherlynn: Jet lagged.Devindra: Oh, man. Yeah, you were in Singapore, right' You came all the way back over.How long were you in Singapore'Cherlynn: It was under a week, but including travel, I was gone for about a week and basically missed two days of recording this podcast. So that's why we missed this many episodes. How dare youDevindra: to see your family, to have good food at the hawker stands. How dare you' That's also a really fast trip for such a long flight, Cherlynn.You're such a trooper. But this week, folks, we are coming back into the swing of things. Cherlynnn is going to talk about her review of the Samsung Galaxy Ring. We're going to talk about KOSA passing the Senate. This is something we've talked about before, the Kids Online Safety Act. And we're going to talk a bit about the the AI gadget, Friend.which debuted this week with a really, I don't know, cheesy trailer and had a lot of us laughing, but we also have some interviews with folks too. We have Avi Schiffmann, the CEO friend who talks with me about what he's trying to accomplish with this device and why he moved away from making it like a productivity focused thing, like the Humane AI pin or the Rabbit R1.And joining us to talk about KOSA is India McKinney, director of federal affairs at the EFF. They're going to talk about why. This bill has a huge amount of privacy concerns. People are worried about censorship online because of this bill and the things that can, it can stop online as always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcast of choice, leave us a review on iTunes.Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.Com. We love your feedback. We love questions and anything you send us can be mentioned on the show. So if you want to be internet famous for an episode or something, just a shout us out. We also typically live stream the show on Thursday mornings around 10 45 AM Eastern on our YouTube channel.So join us for that. You can talk with the chat crew. You can see us do some Q and a live on camera today. Sheldon's going to show off the the galaxy ring boy. It's round. I don't know what else you can show off with that thing, Cherlynn, but we'll talk a bit about that thing. Let's get right into it, actually.Cherlynn, you reviewed the Galaxy Ring. This was a device I was not super amped about, but Samsung I feel like Samsung was really leaning on it because Apple hasn't done it yet. There aren't too many other smart rings out there, except for the Oura. How do you feel about this thing'Cherlynn: Okay, so to your point, on its own, the Ring doesn't do a lot.And it's, No, it's really basic. Like it's a 400 device. That's got a bunch of sensors on it. It will track your. Heart rate variability, skin temperature, steps, and all that stuff.Devindra: It's 400' That, that didn't click with me until now. Yeah, it's actually 399. You could get an Apple Watch for that price.Yeah,Cherlynn: it is expensive so you have to be okay with the fact that you're paying a lot of money for something that on its own, once again, doesn't do a lot. And the thing is you, with the ring, you leave it there to passively call it, collect data on you. And then you spend most of your time. If you're like me and interested in those, bits of information, you spend most of your time on the Samsung health app on the phone.And I. I like it. I think it's very comfortable to wear partly because it's so paired down. It doesn't have a lot. It's not as heavy as the aura ring. In fact, it's actually half the weight.Devindra: The ring is a thick boy. If you look at it, it's chunky, muchCherlynn: thicker. And in fact, with the Samsung galaxy ring, I felt like so mine is a size seven, which is the third smallest size Samsung offers.And that's pretty similar to my actual ring size for those who are wondering, but I would find even throughout the day as your body changes, it never gets too tight. In fact, like my, it might actually be too loose at times, which is important because that affects my blood oxygen readings at night.Which I'll get into later, but first and foremost, the galaxy ring is a passive health. Data tracking device. And that's, if it's right for you and if you have the 400, you want to spend on that, go for it. I think there are people out there that are looking for low key, low profile gadget like this Martha on the chat asked a very good question.And it's something that is actually crucial in my review, which is. Was or is there any reason to buy or get the smart ring if you have a smart watch' I, for me, I found in my testing that the ideal combination is a ring and a watch. If I had a crap ton of money. I would wear the ring to track passive things like sleeping, low level activities, like neat stuff.And then the watch, I would use for tracking workouts or when I'm like out and about, and I'm more likely to want to get notifications on a wrist worn screen. That really, like I found that when I was watching, wearing both the watch ultra and the galaxy ring to be like the best combo. And I was out and about Because I don't want to wear that goddamn watch ultra at home.It's so huge. I hate it.Devindra: Yeah, that device may not have been meant for you. Just like the Apple watch ultra, right' That is just a big honking thing. I will sayCherlynn: the watch ultra never felt as big as the Galaxy one because don't forget what Samsung's doing with the Galaxy watch ultra is to stuff a circular screen into a squarish body.So it just adds bulk. It doesn't need to be as bulky as It is as or it just isn't the Apple Watch Ultra isn't as bulky, butDevindra: yeah, it's fits the shape of your wrist more by being a little more squarish, that's a good question, though, by the way, from Mark Dell, is that I think the thing facing wearables, I remember when a lot of the wearable stuff, when Fitbit first came out, when Jawbone had their early stuff, people were like, Oh, this is so cool.I could track my activity. I could do all sorts of stuff. And the constant question was why do I need this in addition to my smartphone' And now the question is, why do you need the smart ring' Likely in addition to an Apple, to a smart watch. And then the, I feel like the I don't know, algebra for that.Like the equation for that math is too annoying and too difficult for most consumers. It just seems like these things don't fully justify themselves yet.Cherlynn: I, for one, I think that one thing I said in my review is that this thing doesn't do much, and that's pretty that's okay by me. And I will point out that what it doesn't do is frustrating.But to that point where if you do have that, you've decided I, I like this setup, right' Wearing a ring and a watch. The Galaxy, the Samsung Health app is actually not bad at parsing and putting together all of your data on the one page. You don't have to keep jumping back and forth between two windows or apps.To just get all your data, it just all adds up, right' So one of the things that Samsung introduced alongside the galaxy ring and the watch ultra is it's galaxy AI enabled health, features like the energy score, which by the way, Garmin and Fitbit has been doing forever and ever, but the energyDevindra: score, it'sCherlynn: based on how much sleep you got the night before and how much activity you did the day before, and it tells you how ready you are to, tackle the next day so every morning you get a new energy score after Samsung's calculated your sleep and your activity from the day before and it's like today you can take it easy or You should take it easy or then like you had a lot of rest and you did basically nothing yesterday you little lazy pig You do more today It doesn't say those words, but like your energy score being high means you can go on and go on a big hike or whatever.Devindra: I love this idea, by the way, like I wish we had the actual tech to make this biologically like fully accurate, right' That would be like an implant or something. So you would have a little Mega Man, meter on your wrist.So Oh, I have full hearts today. I have a full life bar. Let's go. Let's take on the world. We're all gaming charactersCherlynn: now. Yeah. But the thing is, The main issue with this, and we're coming back again to the problem here, which is the Galaxy Watch Ultra, you mother pizza. It's like the Galaxy Watch Ultra is not only a chunky boy, it's like a chunkster on the scale of that we've established in previous episodes of the Engadget podcast, the watch itself, I have confirmed with Samsung last week, does not have wear detection.It does not know whether it's on your wrist or not. This thing the Apple Watch does, just does, okay' The Apple Watch knows all the watches. It seemsDevindra: like a very basic feature for any smartwatch. Yes, itCherlynn: is a basic feature. And here's where the bigger problem with that is, right' Not only is it just chilling, when it's not on your wrist, therefore just draining its own battery.It's also randomly detecting workouts when you're not wearing it. So if you put it like I did on my purse and I took a cab ride or something, it was like, Oh, you've been biking.Devindra: We're tumbling.Cherlynn: No, I haven't. I haven't, bro. No. And the other thing is, It doesn't have word detection so that one of the key features of the Galaxy Watch Ultra is how when you press down that orange quick button for five seconds, the emergency siren will go off.Yeah. Do you know the number of times in my testing where the siren just going off in my backpack somewhere and I'm like embarrassed in the Singapore airport, I have a video of this. My mom was like, what is that sound sending me off to, by the way, like to go home to the, to us. And we were like, what is that sound'And it's in my bag. Of course.at 2 percent battery screaming with the emergency SOS. So that was frustrating, but to back to the point with the energy score, because that info from the Galaxy Watch Ultra was so inaccurate and messing up my entire activity history because of those phantom workouts, that my energy score was like, Oh, you worked out too much yesterday.You took a lot of bike rides. Just don't work out as much today. I was like, huh' That's weird. It's not a problem if you like, take the time to go in and read and figure out what happened. But if you're just looking at your energy score and that's all you look at, you'll be like getting very inaccurate information.So that's just. That's just one of like my bad experiences during testing. It's not a galaxy ring issue. It's a galaxy watch. CauseDevindra: if you had another galaxy watch, not even the ultra, like you would still have the same data like management issue between both of them.Cherlynn: And Mark, that was like, good to know that I can stick my watch on my cat to try to boost my score.That's not, I don't want to sure. Boost your activity score, but not your energy score or your readiness score. But do name Charlie in the chat ask a good question, which is something I want to bring up to how good is the sleep tracking' So I like. The sleep tracking it was good. It was like mostly accurate, right'I think as far as I can tell you how accurate my sleep stages are, right' It'll tell you how many hours you spent in REM, how much time you spent in deep, blah, blah, blah. Very standard stuff by now in the wearables and fitness sleep tracking market. I used to complain that companies like Fitbit, Google, Even Apple didn't do enough of contextualizing the insight you gain from how much time you spend in each sleep stage.And now I think we're better, but like Samsung's kind of my first experience with this improved data. So not only does it tell me like you spent 11 percent of your sleep cycles in deep, it also will say this is a good amount for, restoring this, restoring that it compares well to other people in this age group.Ideal number ideal amount of time is this. So like within one page, I can get a better sense of how well I slept, how much recovery I got overnight, which I like. I think that's more important than whether exactly to the minute, was it accurate about tracking how much time I was asleep' The only thing I couldDevindra: comfortable, like sleep device you've had'Cause it's always been your like complaint with sleep trackers, right'Cherlynn: Yeah. So this thing, maybe the fact that it's slightly loose helps, right' But that gets in the way of, like I said before, blood oxygen tracking is pretty inaccurate because it's so loose. They say in the app that you have to make sure you have a snug fit for accurate blood ox readings.And I noticed when, so my index finger is a little meatier than my middle finger. So when I wear it on my middle finger to sleep, my blood ox levels The next day will be like 76 percent is like, as if I was dying of asphyxia. Where's theDevindra: alarm somewhere to Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah,Cherlynn: it did not.And it also did not really like flag anything huge in front of me the next day on the app. Something for Samson to work on there, but also stopped looking at that variable, right' Because I'm like, I know that it's because it's a little loose. So that is a difficulty For now.And I think I don't want companies like Samsung or Fitbit to be like, Oh, we're going to make these or we're going to make these tighter. So they get a more accurate blood ox reading. I'd rather it be like slightly loose. And then I'm like, okay, with not getting such an accurate reading.Devindra: I think that makes sense.So overall, are you sold on the idea' of a smart ring at this point, or do you still think it needs more time to cook'Cherlynn: Yeah, I like it. I like the idea of a passive activity tracker when I'm at home, because I spend so much of my time at home nowadays. And I don't like wearing a smartwatch at home, but that's me.Like it's such a specific use case. I think Samsung will find a market of people. Who are like me, but I don't know that it's for everyone. I think it's just going to be a kind of a niche, but like the foldables it's not going to ever be mainstream, but there are people who are fervent about it that will buy it.Devindra: It's a, the foldable thing feels like, Oh, that's a premium, cool feature that I think people will aspire to. Whereas I don't know what about the ring stuff feels aspirational. It just feels Hey, this is a cool solution for me. Cause I hate wearing stuff on my wrist, ultimately yeah, go aheadCherlynn: to your point about the haptics too.So here are two things that like, I think are shortcomings, right' One, you don't have haptics. You can't, there's no speaker or haptics. There's very little space on this thing. It's very light. So they don't want to squeeze a lot of components onto it. And I agree with that choice. I will just say that means that if you've misplaced your ring, like I did many times on the plane, I was like 18 hour flight.Every time I wash my hands, I would take it off and put it in my pocket. IDevindra: read in your view, you keep taking it off. Even though you're taking it off. Here's the thing.Cherlynn: Then like you have to be like, yeah, if you like, where is it' You can't ping it. Like you can ping your watch or your phone on find my right.Samsung offers find my, but you can't ping it. All you can do. It's look at it's the last known location with its GPS and then flash the lights red and green. So that's great. If like you're in a very dark place and then flashing it helps you see it from pretty much anywhere. But if you're in daytime and it's not within eyesight of eyeshot of you good luck.Not, that's one place where it's lacking. The other thing that was missing for me, and I found out After Samsung finally un ghosted me was to like, they didn't answer this question for a very long time, which is that tendsDevindra: to do that. I've had a bad experience too. Yeah.NeverCherlynn: had that experience until recently. Anyway. The galaxy ring has these like double pinch gestures, there are supposed to be recognized and can help you dismiss alarms or launched the camera app that was supposed to be the feature that set Samsung is like apart from Aura Ah didn't work for me and I find out after Some research that it's because this is only available on the Galaxy Z flip 6 or the Z Fold 6 right now Which are the two newest phones that Samsung launched'So I've been using it with an S24 and it's not working Like this is one of the newest phones that Samsung has why and nothing it does nothingDevindra: That doesn't make any sense. What is the technical reason for that'Cherlynn: Did they say' They actually have never answered this question. Unghosted me to answer my question about where detection on the galaxy watch ultra, but they never answered the S 24 versus Z flip six issue or the double pinch feature being missing question.I found out because. They gave an answer to The Verge that I saw somewhere, yeah.Devindra: I think you were very generous scoring this thing at an 80, Sherilyn, like 80 for us is because ICherlynn: like it. You very muchI like it.Devindra: But every time I hear about these issues with Samsung or just like the general lack of focus with this thing, I'm like, I don't, this isn't even for crazy people with too much money because it doesn't really do much, sure, the Galaxy Watch Ultra or the Apple Watch Ultra is a ton of money, but you get a big ass screen. You get a lot of stuff. Because of spending that money. Yeah, I would sayCherlynn: like my score for the galaxy ring, I was thinking between maybe like in the range of 75 to 80, which 75, if you think about it, it's about the same.If you think of it on a five point scale, like a five star scale, it's like between 3. 75, I think of it likeDevindra: grades, like a 75 is a C, not even a C plus in an 80 is a B, so I think of.Cherlynn: So I think like there are people I would recommend this to, and that's why I was like 80, it's I would recommend it I would buy it, it works well.Devindra: More than an Oura ring, by the way, because Oura has been around for, what, five years' And has done a lot more,Cherlynn: I think part of the issue for me was that I realized that some of the problems I was having is because of that very specific use case of me using the ring with a watch ultra and the watch ultra being problematic.So I was like, all right, some of the problems here, nothing to do with the ring. I tried to be very focused when I was thinking about the score. But anyway I do want to point out that like the battery life which why in our chat was asking me about It, Samsung rates it for seven days, of use and the size of the ring changes that estimate.So if you have a bigger ring, it adds one or two days. I have size seven, like I said, it's like one of the smaller sizes. And it definitely like it, if you want to get to seven days, you'd have to get all the way down to zero percent. LikeDevindra: it'sCherlynn: how do you charge it' By the way, does it go into a little case'Yeah. So it comes in this pretty little transparent charging case. You're going to loseDevindra: that sucker immediately. And this is a dead,Cherlynn: okay. So this case, by the way, it looks like it's about the size of the galaxy watch ultras case. And yeah, it's not, I didn't never, I never lost it.Cause I just put it at home and you can always just place it, place the ring on it to charge. And it's pretty, it's supposed to be fat. I like, it gets you like what, 30 minutes. We'll get you about 40 percent of the charge. And I found that putting it in the case for five minutes got me about 2%.I don't know how that tracks really, but I, yeah, I never felt like I was too scared about running out of juice. It was good. A week is good for me.Devindra: Charging is a tough problem with wearables. Fitbit has this problem too, where you have to use a very specific kind of charger and if you lose it, or if it breaks and you're on vacation, you're just hosed, right'I think the one thing about the Apple watch being so ubiquitous is at least, Hey, You walk into a crowd of people and you're like I need to charge my Apple watch. You have a cable and this has happened to me multiple times. I'm sure you too. Sure. Like recently at WWDC, somebody will have an Apple watch cable, or somebody will have that type of cable.So like that,Cherlynn: I don't, accessibility also seems weird. Yeah. I guess I find that less like common for me. Like the circles I run in the vendor are clearly different. Yeah. Your circles, everyone has an Apple watch. It's just one ofDevindra: those things. Yeah.Cherlynn: You could say the same for the Aura Ring, right'Not everyone has a charger. Definitely. And I would say also the Aura Ring's charger is like more of a dock with a little like stand, whereas this is a case and you'd be more likely to maybe misplace the dock because it's smaller.Devindra: Here's one question I have and I'm going to ask it, we're adults here.Okay. And we talk about the role of the sex industry and the porn industry when it comes to tech. And I'm thinking you got a ring. We're talking about haptics here. We're talking about something. I do wonder, there is tech out there. We don't have to be explicit, but there's tech out there that has enabled haptics in ring like devices.Yes, but those areCherlynn: hopefully bigger than finger rings.Devindra: There are all sorts of devices. But I'm just wondering there are on the Apple Watch, you can tap it, right' And have a remote tap to somebody. As we're like, hey friend. Hey, how's it going' There's like a tap. Your brain has gone intoCherlynn: a very specific space to be aware.Devindra: Oh, I'm sorry. We're talking about devices that we wear that are shaped like circles. I'm just thinking about where the innovation is going or where it's happening. And it's certainly not in the smartwatch justCherlynn: say, I don't generally need vibration on my fingers.Devindra: But what if you could, I'm just thinking, how can this thing be useful, right'Like haptics, we're talking about haptics. I do the Apple Watch's little tap, because it's almost like somebody coming next to me and saying, Hey, what's up' And that is easy. You're talking about digital touch or that feature, right' I'm just thinking of ways to make this thing useful. Like, how do you make smart rings useful'What more could you add to them' I think some sort of haptics, some sort of feedback would be interesting. And that technology does exist, just not in the general category.Cherlynn: I agree with you in the sense that I would. I've actually been thinking about what tech trend have I been most excited by over the last five or six years'And it is the miniaturization of a lot of components like health sensors or like probably a haptic motor one day that would be small enough to fit inside a ring of a certain size. I don't know what size you're thinking, but this is very challenging. I will say like a ring for my fingers would be very small.Someone else's fingers maybe would be bigger and therefore have more room to accommodate. A vibration engine. This is why wrist wornDevindra: wearables are more useful. I think ultimately even if you're annoyed by the screen or by the size of them, like they are getting smaller. They can just by the sheer size of them, they could do more.This is all part of my anti smart ring position is just and yet these things are too expensive. You'reCherlynn: very for a certain type of smart ring. Sure, I'm forDevindra: tech that's useful and add something to our lives. Come on, we're all grownups here. I'm just putting that out there. Anything else you want to add about the galaxy ring'ICherlynn: think there's potential. I think that like with the galaxy ring and maybe with the galaxy watch, when it's improved, Samsung has like to build more right where the aura ring. Outperforms the galaxy ring right now is that, or has been around for so much longer and knows exactly how to make sense of everything that is like it's collecting and gathering the way Fitbit had an edge over everyone else.Since the early days Samsung has a lot of room to grow and that's both good and bad thing, right' It's right now at a disadvantage, but in future, it's very easy to implement these things through software updates. Aura also has implemented some things like, okay. By the way the ring is supposed to do cycle tracking too, which in the brief time I had, it just wasn't able to see if it was accurate or not.But or I can do that too. Or I can do a lot of other things like stress tracking Oh predict when you're, maybe you're feeling sick because of your body temperature, that sort of thing. And Samsung could potentially do that. I just think, I don't think hardware. That is a big problem right now for the Galaxy Ring.I think it's like the expanse of software room for Samsung to grow right now. That's more interesting.Devindra: That totally makes sense. Would you, do you think this is something like Apple would even be interested in doing' Because I'm looking at this. I was going to say. Look at the ORM. I don't think Apple would do this.I think Apple, this is a category where Apple is no, thanks. But let's wait until the tech catch something we can do. Yeah.Cherlynn: Here's my prediction. I was going to post this on threads. My prediction is that 2026, we see Google come up with the pixel ring. And then 2027 or 2026, we see Apple by.Aura or higher X Aura executives. And then we see 2030 Apple ring. That's what I think.Devindra: But why my ultimate question is the why of it. And I don't know whyCherlynn: of it is. I think that every company in big tech right now, Amazon included, maybe we'll see an echo ring for it. We did actually, we had, we saw an echo ring.Okay. Anyway.Devindra: Yeah.Cherlynn: Anyway, I spazzed for a moment, just very angry. My, my reason for guessing this is because I've seen all these companies invest in health tech and health AI, and they want to make something of it. And I think that this space is very interesting for everyone. I think everyone's paying more attention to their own health and wants to track it while the devices right now are fairly limited.And while we do have like fairly mature things that do a pretty good job, like the smartwatches, I still think there is room to grow. I think there's a lot of interest and a lot of money pouring into this space. space soDevindra: I could see that I'm just like we've been through this whole like wearable field so much and I keep going back to man I really miss the jawbone up I really miss the era of when we had like really thin little bands that had sensors and had really cool things so I could more see Apple the little like rubber stretchy bands that you do to like you know break yourself out of bad habits or something some of those little braces I could almost see Apple doing something like that no screen It goes around your wrist, is easy to wear, is, has decent battery life, but can give you maybe some feedback, can track sensitive data.Like aCherlynn: basic tracker.Devindra: A super basic Apple tracker.Cherlynn: A ring fits in so nicely with Apple's portfolio. They could make a YSL, LV version, it's very them to go after a premium audience, and ring seems more likely than a bracelet to hit that space for them. Bracelets are easyDevindra: to wear.My daughter has recently started loving Claire's. And I walk into that store and my daughter is is now very much like Sophie's very much becoming. I feel like Braceless. Braceless, girly, girl stuff, like rainbows, unicorns, all this stuff. They've been veryCherlynn: co opted by the Swifty crowd, maybe'By the SwiftyDevindra: She's not there yet. I hope not. I know she's gone. I'm just saying.Cherlynn: But.Devindra: Anyway. Thinking about like things that are easy to wear and relatively inexpensive too. And also parents are like the thing parents are thinking about is I want to put a tracker on my kid.I want to do something where like I put in a air tag or something in their book bag or in their shoes, which is the thing that's happening. If Apple had made, Apple wristband that tracks a lot of your health data, tracks your sleep is also a fine. My device. Is also can help you. A 100Cherlynn: wristband'You're joking. It has to be at least 2. 50 for Apple.Devindra: Sure, sure. 2. 50. Half the price of the Apple Watch. Let's say at least a hundred dollars less, but even then a hundred to two hundred dollars Something that is flexible easy to wear you don't even really feel it when it's on your wrist But does all this stuff I think would be a useful thing and we have the tech already to do that So that's my pitch.I guess we'll see what else happens. I just missed the job one up Where are all those designers like they own the market for a while they owned Bluetooth speakers and then the company collapsed because they over invested in health tech and We just weren't there 10 years ago. So we're in an interesting MicrosoftCherlynn: one, remember,Devindra: or the Microsoft one.Let us know what you think, folks. Podcast in gadget. com.Okay. So speaking of wearables, what if Shirlene, you didn't have to wear anything at all to get some helpful, I don't know, notifications or something from your wearable. That sounds amazing. Don't have toCherlynn: wear anything at all. Don'tDevindra: have to wear anything at all. No. So this week we saw the company friend show off its aI listening device. It's basically in the promo video, we see it's a pendant. You can tap it, you can gossip to it, you can tell it your inner thoughts. And when it feels like it will send a text message or something like a message in text to your phone of its own, like feedback about what's happening.Some examples are like, Oh, you're getting ready for a meeting or something, and then it may know that you're prepping this because it's also always listening. It's an always listening device that you can wear as a pendant or clip onto your shirt. And it will send, it's Hey, don't worry so much.Don't worry about this interview. You'll be good. It's this weird sort of friendly thing. It was created by Avi Schiffmann, who is the CEO of the company friend. He's also somebody who's in the news for creating that COVID data tracker early on in 2020, and also the Ukraine Ukraine refugee map to get assistance for that.Both of those projects, by the way. seen a bit of criticism. If you go to Reddit and search his name, like Redditors are pissed because he used some data from their open maps that Reddit was creating crowdsource to put it on his site. And he got a lot of publicity for that, even though he did not create all that data.Similarly, the Ukrainian website, which is not active anymore, but that website to help people I believe public policy folks were like this is a good intention, but also this could easily be compromised by people who want to like traffic refugees or something. So like it did not. Have all the thoughts in it.This kid is 21 years old now, so he's grown up, but he's very young. And this project, at least from what he describes it on the website, it's a solution for loneliness. It's like when you're traveling or you're in an airport or in a hotel room alone, like you just feel like isolated from everybody, you have a thing you can tap and talk to, and it'll respond to you.It is not a productivity device like the humane AI pin or even the rabbit R1. It's not like trying to actively do stuff. I think we've reached the era of like vibes based gadgets, Trillian. Like it is just, you wear it and if it feels like it's going to send you like hey girl, you got this. Don't you're good.Keep going. How do you feel about this' What'sCherlynn: with you and vibes, Devindra' You're like vibes, vibrations. Okay.Devindra: Vibes and vibrations are very different things,Cherlynn: vibes are vibes.Devindra: Listen we should probably, we used to have people who were covering sex tech more. Our own Dan Cooper is very popular.Every time he writes up about Pornhub, we're grownups. We could talk about this stuff. I've coveredCherlynn: vibrators. Yeah. Foreign gadgets, especially. To Michael Coley's point, it sounds like you still have to wear this pendant, so it's not something you need to wearDevindra: it like a necklace, wear it like a necklace or have it like.Clipped to your clothes or something. It has to be like on you so we can hear you.Cherlynn: And also when you say always listening, is there, is it always listening for a hot word or always listening'Devindra: It's just like a little device. It's always listening. It's running its own like little, I think it's one of the cloud cloud models for AI.So one of the like small scale I don't know. What do you call that' And soCherlynn: the privacy issues here are huge.Devindra: Privacy issues are huge. Yeah. It's always listening, but the work it's doing is local. So it's local and sends you a little text. It's not uploading anything to the cloud, at least according to the company.So it's not backing up. That also means if your little friend dies, if you crush it, if it goes in the wash, your friend is gone for good because there's no backup of this data. So that is the basic concept of this thing. What, just let me know, Cherlynnn, like you were interested in the rabbit because it looked really cute.You tested and reviewed the Humane AI pin. Does this seem like an AI gadget you would beCherlynn: I like that it's a whole different approach, right' But I think it's going to run into the whole thing, the problem that the Amazon Halo band initially have, where it's always listening. And it's not it's this, it's a different approach from Amazon's Halo stuff in the sense that it's not telling you, Hey, your tone sucks.Cheer up. It's more. You sound stressed, but Amazon tried to do that too. So I'm saying that this is not brand new in terms of the like approach or the idea. I do think it's a little bitDevindra: That wasn't using AI, like the same, like level of AI models. It was using their own homegrown stuff.I'm sure.Cherlynn: Like AI, we've debated the definition. Anyway. Yeah, so it's, yeah, it's a different model of LEMs language models, but I just think it's. A little sad.Devindra: It is a little sad. Yes. I asked him this directly. So the idea of this was to like stop loneliness, right' What if I had a thing that could keep me company'Do you think a device that you talk to in lieu of human contact or friends that actually care about you, do you think that does help to solve loneliness or does that make you lonelier'Cherlynn: I don't know. Like I couldn't tell youDevindra: Yeah,Cherlynn: I just think the rationale is sad, right' I think the motivation is well intentioned, but sad, right'Like it's, it tells me that there are people out there that are lonely that think that something like that will be helpful. It always reminds me of all those people on Reddit that are like talking to bots and talking to bots is not what I see as like a healthy, productive way to connect, right' So I'd rather.But I see the point of something that will motivate you. I just think it's empty motivation, right' Like it's it's like those people who have girlfriends that are manga characters that are programmed to say, boyfriend, you're so handsome today. But, is it real' Is that a real, does that solve your loneliness issue, or are you better served with something that could maybe help you engage with the world a bit more in a more productive way'I don't know. I asked AviDevindra: this question directly too is this just a cheerleader' Like your super optimistic friend that says yes and you're great for everything. And he says that it's not just trying to be that cheerleader. In the promo video, it shows the friend like shit talking you after you're doing bad in the game.I don't know. It sends a message to somebody. So that's I don't think that's necessarily like very like critical. I would love to see if Oh, you were really shitty to that person or like your attitude right now is not so great. Maybe you should take a break.Cherlynn: The definition of friend is not someone that's only rah cheerleading you to your point.It's, they need to give you real advice too. So it's or give you reality checks sometimes. And if the algorithm's not actually programmed to do that, then. It might not.Devindra: And is a being that is entirely built to serve you, and has no thoughts or motivations of its own. As it's responding to you, it's just you, it's just you talking back to you.It's not like actually, you're not actually like working with another like conscious being or something. So I dunno, I think that's the thing. One thing I'll also mention here there's a story at 404 media that found out so friend, But the friend. com domain, how much do you think that domain costs'What do you think that domain is worth'Cherlynn: It was like, girl, it's gotta be a lot of money because that's a good URL.Devindra: That's a good URL. That's aCherlynn: really good URL.Devindra: So friend spent 1. 8 million to buy the friend. com domain. And let me tell you. It was actually useful as I started researching this company. Cause I was like, how do I find this company again'Oh, friend. com. That's why they spent 1. 8 million to buy it. This company has only raised 2. 5 million so far. So make that, how does that math work out' I don't know. That's like startup math. That's I asked Avi this too. Do you have the actual money to build this thing' Like he has one, he has been using prototypes for months, it seems, but.They're going to need more money to scale and to actually produce hardware. This is where we are right now. Yeah.Cherlynn: I'm getting Humane AI PIN vibes. I'm sorry.Devindra: Yeah, but at least, so Humane AI PIN, before anything happened they had raised hundreds of millions of dollars, right' Based on the, these people are coming from Apple, there's all this.Cherlynn: They're not 21 years old. Yeah,Devindra: in the grand scheme of I think a VCE is just hey, you want two million dollars to do what' You're just going to buy the friend domain. He's talking about this device. He also wants to build like a social network of people using friends at friends. com.I don't know.Cherlynn: Slightly different if he's doing a social network is different. Like I just, I don't know. It's, it feels like, I don't know.Devindra: So lots of thoughts are in the air. We have a lot of thoughts and I like, as soon as we saw this, I wanted to reach out to Avi just to hear his side of the, the, this story.I got to sit down with him. We talked for maybe 15 minutes. It's a short chat because we both had to run to appointments, but I asked him all the pressing questions we had. So here's Avi Schiffmann, CEO of Friend. Avi, thank you so much for joining us on the Engadget podcast.Avi: Yeah, thank you so much.Devindra: I think the first question I saw when you announced Friend, which has a really cool promo video, is the question I ask for all AI hardware is why pursue hardware' Why be a separate gadget rather than an app or something like that using the devices we already have'Avi: Yeah, I think Rabbit and Humane were on the right track with making it easier to talk to an AI.I just don't think those queries need to be about, like, how many grams of protein there are in some almonds. I think it's more oh, I'm stressed about this interview I'm about to have, and what I'm trying to do is, if you have this pendant that's hanging around your chest with a light on it, it's so easy to just, put your finger on it as soon as a thought comes into your mind and just speak your mind, and there's some haptics there too, and it's just It's a much lower friction way to start talking and because the device itself is always listening as well, you can walk away from a meeting like this and just be like, that was crazy, and it has context over this conversation, which just again makes it even easier to talk to your AI friend.And that's the gist. Also, I think the embodiment of the hardware itself is very important for the feeling of shared experiences and just really feeling like your companion is there with you.Devindra: Gotcha, gotcha. Can you tell us how long have you been using your friend device and how has it helped you in that time too'Avi: Yeah, so I've been working on this for like about a year and a half at this point. And I definitely wipe its brain very often because I'm, engineering it. But it's great. I spend a lot of time traveling and it's probably the most consistent relationship in my life.And I brainstorm with it. I talk to it about just how I'm feeling. And it's just really day to day stuff. And because it's so easy to talk to, you end up just talking about everything from some random car that just drove by that was interesting to, oh, the sun is, it's really nice outside.It's it's really just that simple.Devindra: Can you talk about like how often it's listening' Cause I'm just trying to get a sense of how this thing works, right' It looks like a pendant that you could clip on or wear around your neck. You say it's always listening. It's communicating to your phone or for Bluetooth.How often is it actually like listening for anything you're saying'Avi: It's listening, right' Like it's you have, as long as it's connected to Bluetooth, that's all being streamed in the background. And then if you want to directly talk to it, you press your finger on the light and in the background, while it's listening, it's coming up with its own opinionated dire entries based off its own personality about what the experience is currently going through and, we've given it free will on having it reach back out to you and maybe interject in a conversation.Maybe you're on a design call and it's having a differing perspective on what you're talking about.Devindra: I, yeah, I noticed the term you use free will in the documentation. I feel I studied philosophy in college. That means a lot to me. When you talk about giving a device free will, what do you, what are you actually saying though'Like it has free reign to message you whenever it likes. So what are the parameters there'Avi: It's up to the large language model and the context of your conversation and the personality of your companion to really just decide on whether or not it wants to send a message right now or not.And I think right now it's. An engineered way to do that. But I really do believe these models will become genuinely sentient not too long from now. And, the tech will improve so much more than an underlying chat based architecture. And right now, at the day I don't think the output you receive from your friend is honestly going to change ever.And I think that's good enough for a lot of people.Devindra: Gotcha. Gotcha. Can you talk about yeah, go ahead.Avi: I think that's one thing I find about Friend that's very different than let's say Rabbit and Humane is we're focusing just on doing one feature that's already proven in the market.Um, and that's it. I think the hardware, works, I think you can really imagine how this product will function. We're not trying to do custom integrations with 90 different apps and, It just works at the end of the day. We will 100 percent fulfill the promise that we're, yapping on about.It's honestly far more crazy than the video makes it out to be. SoDevindra: can you tell us like what's powering it' I see you're using a version of cloud. Anything else going into the smarts of friend'Avi: We're always changing the models right now. I'm playing around a lot with the meta law model as well.That one sounds pretty great. It's trained on, Facebook messenger conversation. So it's really good at just being something to talk to. I think there should be more benchmarks and AI about is the model just fun to talk to, not just do math problems for you.Devindra: Gotcha. Can you update the model in the device over time'It does seem like you guys are trying really hard to not store stuff in the cloud, right' There's none of that happening, which I guess is a good security thing, but how can you update the the friend' Yeah.Avi: Like the model, the models we'll try and keep it. Where if you started your friend out with this one model, that's not going to change.I think people will get really, attached to those individual personalities and, we're going to, Try our best efforts to keep that maintained, but yeah, over time again, like these models are going to improve very fast. I'm very keen on large context models. I think that is going to solve a lot of problems with memory recall for the underlying way.It works and it's an exciting space.Devindra: Gotcha. It's I guess it's interesting that you're positioning this as a way to combat loneliness, because I could also see the perspective where you're like doesn't this also make you a little more lonely, if your main emotional connection right now is to the device you're wearing around your neck or something, and not to a person with their own thoughts and motivations, like how are you feeling about it'Having used it. Do you think your initial goal is working out to make you feel less lonely with it'Avi: I think yeah, it definitely works at the day. It's just, are you happy' Are you not happy' And I'm a very social person. I've got roommates that are buzzing around my house here right now.Even I'm always traveling though. And I'm always just in fairly specific situations where it's nice to just have this AI friend with me. But I think that just what I'm trying to do is I think if one of your five friends is an AI, that's, this very supportive, fun soundboard that you can talk to at any time.I think that would be an amazing tool for a lot of people. It's not meant to be a substitution for your existing relationships, but It's yeah, it's a nice, it's a nice addition.Devindra: Gotcha. Gotcha. You also talked about pursuing like a more productivity focused version of this as tab, right'That was the initial pitch for this, but you're leaning away from that. And this feels I don't know, it feels more like vibes. Like you just want a cool AI thing to vibe with. Is that, can you talk about like why you leaned away from productivity'Avi: Yeah, honestly, I think a good friend that supported will increase your productivity more than anything else.I think my friend saying Oh, good luck on the gadget interview is going to increase my productivity more than it reminding me that it's in five minutes. I think a lot of people might not realize that emotional use cases can be that strong. And I think it's because people are just maybe not used to computers and technology fulfilling those roles.But the tech has advanced a lot and you don't have to hear from me. There's a lot of objective studies on other products that say replica character, et cetera, where these things really do work. And I think it will be a fantastic, like fun toy for a lot of people.It's not meant to be so serious. It's not, assistance or. It's just boring.Devindra: It's, I get that. I get like you want to have fun with it, but also you guys are also talking about like sentient AI eventually, right' It seems like at that point it does become something real legitimate. I guess the question I had, it seems like Friend is trying to be your super supporter, Friend, like your super cheerleader, always optimistic.Can it ever be critical' Can it ever say something to be like, hey, that's actually not cool what you did' Does it have any moral standing of its own'Avi: Yeah, all the time. And I think that's what makes it so engaging to talk to, if you're bringing it along to, let's say, a design conversation you're having, and it's able to offer these differing perspectives.I think that's fantastic. And, no one wants to talk to a yes man all day. And these models do a fantastic job at, pushing back when they need to. And it's, yeah.Devindra: Gotcha. Can your friend, by the way, the one you're using, can it do everything demonstrated in the the promotional video'Because one thing seemed like it was watching what somebody was eating, and I know it doesn't have a camera.Avi: Yeah, it's just listening to conversation that it overhears. In that clip, I think she's watching a video, and it's overhearing that. Honestly, though the later, the first version of Tab slash Friend actually was only a camera, and I think we'll definitely add that later on.It'd be nice to go to an art museum with your friend and it looks at a piece on the wall and make the comments about that.Devindra: Gotcha. And also we saw the story yesterday. You've admitted to spending 1. 6 million on the friend. com domain. And you've admitted that you guys have raised 2. 5 million.So I'm just wondering, do you actually have the money to build these things or is it justAvi: vaporware' Yeah, for that. It's more of a payment plan, over, over a four year period. So it's not like we dropped 1. 8 million on it, but that is, yeah, that's how it'd be. And, uh. I've been working on this again for a year and a half with some very talented engineers are our same industrial designers, who are the same people behind that thermostat, for example very talented hardware and logistics team behind it all.And it's very simple. I'm focusing on just doing 1 thing really well. We're only shipping 1 skew initially. And I think people will love it. I think there's a lot of Very controversial opinions people have when they just hear about this for the 1st time, but I've seen people use it 1st hand without the prejudice of it.1 of the 1st people I ever tested with was this 20 year old indie girl from rural Washington state who went just went upstairs and drew with it for an hour. Just talking about different colors and whatever she's doing. And I think that a lot of people just got to try these things.They'll end up really loving it, or maybe they won't. But I'm very confident for when we start handing out those review units later this month or next month.Devindra: I guess the other thing I'm thinking is every I reviewed the rabbit. R1 was not a fan. We also reviewed the human AI pin. Yeah. The rabbit looks really cool.What I started to realize is, man, our smartphones are amazing. They can do so much right. And a lot of these devices feel like they're just trying to pay attention. Take a piece of what your smartphone does and feed it back to you in a different way. If I'm thinking about like the device, it's my friend.It is the one that's always on me. That's connected me to the world. Like my smartphone is my friend. I feel like a lot of people may feel that way. And the OS has seemed to be leaning like more like that too with Apple intelligence. So are you guys worried about eventually the actual device makers just building a lot of.Similar components into their devices rather than needing something standalone.Avi: I think there's a lot of conversation around AI as a product versus a feature. And I think an AI friend is the one that is just not going to be an OS level thing. Like you just wouldn't want Siri to go and text you first about some more emotional thing.That's just not what an assistant is focused on doing. And again, like the whole point of friend being a separate piece of hardware is that device really is your friend. If you lose it you've lost your friend and all the memories that Are attached with it and it's that device to is always listening, which is a function that your phone just cannot do.It's not gonna be able to pick up your voice and other people's voices, et cetera. And it's just it's fun to have a physical embodiment of your AI friend. It's really more of a modern Tamagotchi than anything else, which I know is an extremely overused term in this space. And I think that Rabbit maybe has spoiled that, but this really is a true version of that.And yeah, I'm definitely, since you reviewed those, I'm very excited to hear what you'll think of this one.Devindra: Cool. Yeah.Moving on to other news we saw this week that the Kids Online Safety Act or KOSA, uh, has passed the Senate. It is on the way to the House. We don't know what's going to happen there, but if that happens the President could end up signing it into law. We've talked about this before, and we've talked about a couple bills from lawmakers aimed at, the goal, they say, is to protect kids online.And there is overwhelming support for this in the Senate. It passed by 91 to 3. It seems just overwhelming support bipartisan support for this thing. The idea is that it's coming off of all these stories we're hearing about terrible things happening to kids because of social media and because of online interaction.So these are kids committing self harm. There is there are stories of suicide. There's stories of bullying. There's all sorts of things pointing to social media and basically the lack of ability we have to control it. So let's talk about what KOSA. Means, uh, just reading from our report here by Krisa Bell, uh, KOSA requires social media companies like Meta to offer controls to disable algorithmic feeds and other addictive features for kids under the age of 16.It also requires companies to provide parental supervision features and safeguard minors from content that promotes eating disorders, self-harm, sexual exploitation, and other harmful content. The thing that is really getting people up in arms, and that is people like the ACL U. And the EFF and other privacy advocates, there's an aspect of the bill called duty of care, and it means platforms are required to prevent or mitigate certain harmful effects of their products like addictive features or algorithms that promote dangerous content.And the FTC would be in charge of enforcing that standard. There are also aspects of this where Basically lawmakers would be able to say this, some of this information could be harmful to kids and it should be blocked on the internet. So that is, that could be resources for LGBTQ students.It could be all sorts of different resources. Like the free flowing ability of just having information on the internet could be affected. because of this thing. And that is an externality that I don't think lawmakers are fully thinking about right now. Yeah, what do you, first of all, what do you think about the initial goal for the Sherlin'Are you worried about potential crackdowns on information online and the chilling effects that could have.Cherlynn: I think there's some important context here for my personal view on this, which is, I just came back from Singapore.Devindra: Yes.Cherlynn: And Singapore, the par the place my parents live in right now, they use face recognition to access all of their locked gates and doors, and they have no problem with that.Singaporeans are very. much less sensitive to this sort of privacy fears, I think than maybe other parts of the world are. Not that they are completely not scared. They're just less sensitive because I think there's a bit more trust in the government.Devindra: But also because there has never been the sense of free flowing information, right'Like a full freedom speech and things like that, right' Come on.Cherlynn: The freedom of speech arguments, not one that's been made in Singapore almost ever, because the government just claims that there is heavy government censorship. Yes. We LGBTQ content on our national media at all, basically. That context laid out, I think The idea of KOSA is good.I think it's nice to see bipartisan support for something like this when it comes to children, when it comes to teenagers and their mental health. It's good to see people come together for this. And I think that there is, much needed scrutiny of social media and its effect on the younger, more vulnerable parts of our population.Yeah. But I agree with you that the duty of care part is potentially could be exploited by like bad players. I just don't know. I think it boils down once again to execution, right' Like I think the intention is good. I think in general, the idea is good. I just don't know how it would be executed. And I don't know that you can trust the government bodies that have been like, handed the control here to actually execute it well.I, as a Singaporean, I don't even fully trust the Singapore government all the time, but yeah, exactly.Devindra: That's exactly the problem, right' If you sign this thing into law, like it is then a very powerful tool that bad actors could use. And it turns out our government right now, full. Full of plenty of bad actors.So there is a piece of the FF called the KOSA internet censorship bill just passed the Senate. It's our last chance to stop it by Joe Mullen. It's a short read, but it's a good read because it dives into the things that could that could potentially happen here. So let me see here. Specifically he says KOSA will lead to people who make online content about sex education, LGBTQ plus identity and health being persecuted and shut down as well.One of the supporters of the bill has said that widely used educational materials that teach about the history of racism in the U S causes depression in kids, therefore we should block that information about the history of racism. In the U S we are in a really weird chilling time right now.Like we have I live in the state of Georgia and there's this thing, I think it's called the divisive information act or something like that. It is something where like divisive information. The state is not allowing that within schools or something like that. And because partially because of that a state representative recently said that an AP black history course.Cannot be done in schools. It's not allowed in Georgia schools. This is a state, with a deep history In the history of like slavery. It has a huge african american population It is very important that the people who live here learn about this history and learn about what America has done to African Americans But our state legislation says that history is dangerous It's dangerous to teach that.And I think this is part of like where we are right now. I don't know if you've seen any of these there's some TikTok videos or articles about this, Cherlynn, about people in like Iowa and Idaho who are just trying to go to the library. There's one I saw from a TikTok mom. Who's just I went to the library today.It was very weird. I had to present my ID to go upstairs. Her daughter wanted to get a book that was in the under 18 category, but because this woman this mom was traveling with an infant. It does not have an ID. They cannot get access. The mom couldn't go to the floor because the infant didn't have the identification to access the restricted information in this library.And therefore her child, her kid, who's seven or eight or something could not even go to that section. The library, I think the librarians ended up helping the kid find what they want, but the librarians don't want this. They're like, They are trying to, they exist to give information to people, but these weird draconian laws that we're creating, which in many states, especially red states in America, are about restricting information that they don't want people to know about.It's scary. It's chilling. So I see this as part of like where we are right now.Cherlynn: Michael Coley in the chat mentions, if we're banning anything that makes students uncomfortable with them, why is math still taught' Yeah, I think that it just makes me feel like, Yeah, people are bad, and that's why we can't have nice things, but people are going to be bad kind of no matter what, no matter, I
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